Once we have gathered data, we might wish to classify it. Roughly speaking, data can be classified as categorical data or quantitative data.
Other examples of quantitative data would be the running time of the movie you saw most recently (104 minutes, 137 minutes, 104 minutes,...) or the amount of money you paid for a movie ticket the last time you went to a movie theater ($5.50, $7.75, $9,...).
Sometimes, determining whether or not data is categorical or quantitative can be a bit trickier.
As we study movie-going habits and preferences, we shouldn't forget to specify the population under consideration. If we survey 3-7 year-olds the runaway favorite might be Finding Nemo. 13-17 year-olds might prefer Terminator 3. And 33-37 year-olds might prefer...well, Finding Nemo.
Adapted from Math in Society by David Lippman, hosted on LibreTexts (math.libretexts.org) and licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0. Changes were made. License: CC-BY-SA-3.0.
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